Instagram has only been around since 2010 but the social photo sharing service is quickly becoming a vehicle not only for traditional photo posting but also as a way to share events with massive reach. The social media engagement and monitoring firm VenueSeen recently took a look at photo sharing during the 2012 Summer Olympics and discovered that more than 64,000 pictures were Instagram shared by spectators and athletes in London.

Olympic organizers originally tried to ban the sharing of images, videos and audio recordings from the event, claiming copyright control over events, however with almost every visitor to the London Olympics carrying a smartphone that copyright protection proved to be impossible to control.

The massive sporting event eventually posted guidelines to be followed for athletes and spectators but instead pictures and videos flowed freely.

To determine which photos were Olympic generated the team at VenueSeen examined geo-tagged and hashtagged photos from the 2012 Olympics on Instagram. [Read more…]